


I Don't Have to Prove Myself to You.

by viciouslitany



Category: Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco, The Academy Is...
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Bandom - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3749488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viciouslitany/pseuds/viciouslitany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And then Patrick stands, wiping scraped up hands on his hips and doing his best to avoid looking at this person that actually seems capable of caring about other people; people he doesn’t even know. He used to be able to do that. He remembers it pretty well. Now he never gets the feeling just right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Have to Prove Myself to You.

He jingles when he walks.

There's the sound of keys clipped to his belt loop, change in his pockets getting lost in crumpled receipts.

All he wants tonight is no one to know when he's coming or going, because there's a chip in his pocket that says 2 months - sixty days - and it says that he shouldn't be here tonight. Nervous hands wring together in his lap and then they push light hair out of his eyes, a choppy fringe he can't control no matter what he does.

The middle of a crowded bar used to be his place, the stool he's glued to used to be his scene and have 'Trick' written on the cushion. Tonight he feels like he's coming home for the first time in months. That chip is his shameful secret, the parent he's going to let down.

The last his parents knew what was going on his life, he'd been a perfectly respectable citizen. His friends were great influences, and he'd never been in danger of seeing the inside of a drunk tank.

His friends know, they all do. They don't think it's that serious and he doesn't blame them, because they don't know what it's like to wake up in the morning and need to swallow whiskey like some people gargle listerine. It's not funny to be twenty-two and needy.

He's pinned on either side, both of the men crowding closer with every second.

He smiles at the string bean to his right - Bill - the boy with the brown hair and brown eyes and crooked smile that heads all the way from one side of his face to the other. He orders whiskey, because if he's going to go down in flames, he's going to go down in the kind of flames he wants to go down in.

Maybe it'll help him sleep tonight.

"Now we're talking," the smooth voice of the man on his other side croons into his ear. "This is a party now." Gabe thinks everything is a joke, and Patrick can't bring himself to explain that right now, he feels like he's ruining every attempt he's ever made to be good at anything. They've known each other for years, but there are a lot of things that Patrick doesn't think he can tell anyone.

And a lot more things he knows he couldn't tell Gabe.

The whiskey is fire shooting down his throat.

He doesn't just feel better, he feels amazing. He's down two when a hand clamps onto his shoulder, a boy with a dark fringe and a goofy grin getting in his face with a familiar presence. "Haven't seen you around here in months. Where you been, handsome?"

His name's Brendon, and his boyfriend is just out of reach behind him.

"Making myself a better man," the blond replies, curving a hand protectively around his glass and resisting the urge to throw up at his own bullshit. "How's it been?" Two drinks won't bring the contents up from his stomach, not when he's a seasoned vet.

"Lonely." Bren's a flirt. He winks and he gets a little closer, just for his boyfriend to place a possessive hand on his hip.

All Ryan has to say is encouraging as always, his eyes looking half dead despite the constant flashing lights and the best thrumming through the bar that just couldn't help but make everyone in there feel a little more alive. "You look worse than when you left." Brendon laughs, leaning back and looping his arms around the slighter boy.

Ryan shrugs him away, cold and indifferent to the touch. Bren seems undeterred, trying a second time. It’s a joke, it’s a joke, it’s a joke.

"Thanks, Ryan."

"Any time."

And he needs another, stat.

By the time he’s hit his fifth whiskey on the rocks, he’s warmer than he’s been in years. When he walked out of this place the last time, he’d been thirty pounds heavier and dead cold on the inside.

He doesn’t remember getting up from the barstool and finding his way into Brendon’s arms, but he does.

Ryan’s nowhere to be seen.

Bren makes him dance and sings songs in his ear to jazzy little tunes. The words don’t make sense, but something about the way he says them makes it sound like they do, but that might just be the whiskey. This is the kind of thing that Brendon is good at.

He makes Trick forget that he’s done a thousand things to regret, and he makes him forget the regret that’s already making him wish he’d rubbed the coin in his pocket and just kept walking past the doors tonight.

It feels like there are a thousand people in there that can’t stop looking at the both of them. Nothing about who Patrick is ever makes him think that people could be looking just because of him - no, they must notice Brendon’s impossibly huge mouth or maybe his ass.

It couldn’t be anything about the slight blond with the slightly secretive, drunken smile that he’s swinging around like he’s absolutely nothing.

But he does catch someone’s eye.

And after a little while, they catch his eye, too.

The boy has dark hair and dark eyes and his arms look like they might be permanently folded over his chest. He isn’t emaciated, which is a look that Patrick likes. When their eyes meet for longer than a second, the man smiles.

Patrick looks away.

Later, he sways his way out of the bar alone. The streets are crowded with bodies. Some of them are people he knows and most of them are people he’s never seen in his life, but the way they smile at him.

God, the way they smile at him. They make him feel like somebody, but they don’t make him nearly as nervous as the one from the bar. Every time he meets someone’s eyes, his smile grows bigger. That's the extra whiskey, the one for good luck. 

Every step feels like it’s moving him a mile, but he keeps going until his stomach churns and simply says, “no more”.

He hits his knees on the sidewalk and his stomach works on twisting itself out onto the ground. The gags aren’t attractive, and neither are the skid burns on the skin of his palms.

He doesn’t think to ask whose hand is on his back when it gets there, because it rubs soothingly through the entire contents of his stomach heaving out of his body. Patrick doesn’t think about it. His knees quake and his body shakes, phantom gags making his body tremble.

His fingers curl against the ground.

The stranger places a coin by his hand. When he squeezes his eyes half closed to make it come into focus, it simply reads ‘ _2 MONTHS’._

“Think you dropped this,” he says, his voice unassuming and quiet and _different_ like nothing Patrick’s ever heard. If there was anything left in his stomach, it’d join the puddle on the city sidewalks.

“I forgot I had it,” he lies, spitting acrid bile right out.

And then he stands, wiping scraped up hands on his hips and doing his best to avoid looking at this person that actually seems capable of caring about other people; people he doesn’t even know. He used to be able to do that. He remembers it pretty well. Now he never gets the feeling just right.

This man doesn’t get the hint.

He puts himself right in front of Patrick’s face. Trick doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t to be looking just barely up into the eyes he’d barely been able to see from across the club. Up close and personal, he looks older.

A little more confident, a little more scarred, and a little less like twenty-two than Patrick is.

“You should flip it into the drain for good luck,” this stranger says with that dry voice, and Patrick can’t tell if he’s trying to be funny or trying to make him feel like he’s lower than low.

“You believe in that?”

“I believe in anything with a little bit of sparkle.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write some alcoholic!patrick au's, so THIS WAS BORN and shall be continued


End file.
